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/ 4 November 2002
Mountain people around the world are in danger of losing their cultures and being caught by conflict and environmental degradation, according to a United Nations report. Environmental and social pressures on the remotest regions are escalating.
In the bleached shantytowns of southern Africa they call them the ”ugly sisters” — a twin force of such devastation that from the wreckage it is seldom possible to distinguish one sibling’s impact from the other: Aids and hunger have become inseparable.
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/ 26 September 2002
The fight against poverty in the developing world is being hampered by stringent patent laws imposed by rich countries, an independent commission said last week. Protecting patent rights through the Trips agreement pushes up the price of medicines and seeds for poor countries.
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/ 24 September 2002
The Canadian engineering company Acres International of Ontario has been found guilty of paying bribes for contracts on the multibillion rand Lesotho Highlands Water Project dams, a judgement which could have profound implications for Third World development projects.
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/ 20 September 2002
Irvine Welsh has chronicled the coping mechanisms of the culture that spawned him. And now his old mates have a new fix, an orgiastic outlet for their anger: porn. Sally Vincent reports from London.
New York City in 2022. Half the 40-million people in the swarming metropolis are unemployed, the air is thick with pollution, food and water are as precious as jewels. This was the world of the future as envisaged in the sci-fi thriller, Soylent Green, in 1973.
We smile affectionately at the Morris dancers and bow if introduced to the Queen. But it does seem to me that in the matter of ”games”, such as those currently taking place in Manchester, north-west England, we are taking tradition too far to be healthy.
Northern Ireland faces a ”nightmare scenario” with Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists Party (DUP) and Sinn Fein becoming the dominant parties and the peace process in such trouble that it would take a generation to resolve, First Minister David Trimble said this week.
FORMER South African president Nelson Mandela plans to visit the Libyan
secret agent imprisoned in Glasgow for planting the bomb on a plane that
killed 270 people over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, a Sunday
paper said.
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/ 12 January 2002
A British family doctor convicted of killing 15 patients, and suspected of killing 200 or more, was found dead in his prison cell on Tuesday, the British Prison Service said. Dr Harold Shipman was found hanging in his cell at Wakefield Prison in northern England at 6.20am and was pronounced dead at 8:10am.
The Aids epidemic is causing the spiralling disintegration of some of the poorest countries in Africa, precipitating famine and social, political and economic collapse, says the latest official United Nations update.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has told a British member of parliament that he will implement United Nations resolutions and allow arms inspectors into his country.
An English court has ruled that a father should get custody of his two children because his ex-wife uses the Internet to meet men.
A fiberglass bust that purportedly shows the true face of ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun went on display this week at London’s Science Museum.
An Italian is among the suspects who have been arrested in connection with the main Bali bombing. Newspapers identified him as Andrea Giovanni Sorteni, 38, from Milan, and said he was detained soon after the devastating attack on the Sari Club.
The United Nations chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, yesterday accused hawks in Washington, who are bent on going to war with Iraq, of conducting a smear campaign against him.
A male nurse who admitted lighting the fire that killed the billionaire banker Edmond Safra was yesterday sentenced to 10 years in prison, bringing to an end an extraordinary tragedy of errors that rocked the wealthy Mediterranean enclave of Monaco to its foundations.
The reputation of Silvio Berlusconi’s government sank to a new low at the weekend when newspapers published photographs of members of his coalition casting multiple votes.
The bankers of Cape plc — the company that reached an out-of-court settlement with asbestosis victims last year — would be held personally responsible if it is proved they were responsible for reneging on the agreement, says the victims’ legal counsel.
South African financial services group Investec Plc detailed plans on Monday to raise nearly 100-million pounds via a London share sale to expand its businesses, braving jittery stock markets.
UN weapons inspectors have rejected criticism by the US and Iraq that they are failing to do their job properly.
United Nations weapons inspectors have said that Iraq provided full cooperation yesterday when they visited sites near Baghdad to hunt for illegal weapons.
Troubled British media group Reuters is poised to announce deep job cuts in its editorial workforce as it strives to contain the impact of a steep decline in revenues, the Financial Times said on Thursday.
British police have arrested a woman in connection with the murder of a boy whose mutilated torso was found in a river, a case which has prompted an extended probe into a suspected ritual killing.
UN weapons inspectors begin their work in Iraq today, launching a tense new chapter in the confrontation with Saddam Hussein in which war and peace are likely to hinge on the legal interpretation of two words: ”material breach”.
Jose Manuel Trillanes wrapped his yellow oilskins tight around his body and pointed out to where gale force winds were churning up the Atlantic ocean beyond the small fishing port of O Grove.
Leigh Day and Company, the lawyers representing several thousand South African asbestosis victims, said they would take legal action against Cape Plc for non-payment of expenses.
The case brought by 7 500 South African mineworkers against UK multinational, Cape Plc, has taken a new turn as London-based and local lawyers join forces and challenge the terms of Gencor’s proposed unbundling in the Cape Town High Court.
The US and Britain lack ”killer” intelligence that will prove conclusively that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, according to sources in London and New York.
Ariel Sharon has laid out his terms for Palestinian independence with a vision of an emasculated and demilitarised state built on less than half the land of the occupied territories, and without Yasser Arafat as its leader.
Belgium’s 19th century royal palace has been given an unconventional makeover by one of the country’s most innovative artists, who has taken the unusual step of glueing 1,6-metre iridescent green beetles to its ceiling.
It was like the ”first day at school”, said a beaming Romano Prodi, surveying the European parliament yesterday as new boys and girls from Lithuania to Slovakia gave a foretaste of the future of the continent.